Four months ago, the European Court of Justice ruled that one of Silvio Berlusconi’s stations, ReteQuattro, was broadcasting illegally on frequencies owned by another television company, Europa 7.

Berlusconi’s government is now trying to prevent that ruling from having effect. Not only that, but they’re doing it in a very under-hand way.

In April, just before the elections, the Prodi government put together a bumper package of small changes to bring Italian law into line with recent rulings at the European level. The law, consisting of fourteen articles, was pretty uncontroversial: speaking for my part, I find it difficult to become excited about water regulation.

The Berlusconi government has now introduced an amendment to one of these articles – which previously, and somewhat improbably, concerned regulations of open-sea fishing  – which effectively negates the ECJ’s ruling. As far as I can understand from the amendment, all frequencies already assigned are to remain assigned until the transition to digital.

To say that this shows blatant disrespect for European law is to put it mildly. In truth, I doubt it’s even a very good way of avoiding the judgement: the judgement still has to be put into Italian law by the Consiglio di Stato, which originally referred the matter; but given the clarity of the ruling it’s difficult to see how the Consiglio di Stato can do anything but affirm the Court’s ruling in precedence to all other Italian legislation – including, if passed, this amendment.

Even worse, the issue of Retequattro is just a skirmish in a much wider battle concerning the legality of the Gasparri law governing telecommunications – which is already subject to a letter of formal notice from the Commission. More on the Europa 7 case [in Italian] at  Wikipedia.